The start of every sailing season always involves countless jobs, from putting the boat back together, to checking safety gear, provisioning and of course ensuring the crew are set to go. This week we came a few steps closer to dropping the lines…keel in, mast on, splashdown! 

Arriving in Lewiswporte, Newfoundland a few days ago, we have heard numerous stories from the locals about their epic winter. Most agree, “between the jigs & the reels”, it was one of the coldest, stormiest winters for a very long time, with record snow falls and heavy sea ice. Hundreds of icebergs linger offshore, and the […]

Even though our northern season aboard the yacht Arctic Tern has come to a close, that just means Ice Navigators fly south with the real Arctic Terns to work the high southern latitudes. Here a a few pics from a recent visit to the stunning fiords of Patagonia, where mountains meet the sea.

Arctic Tern is now safely on the hard in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, after yet another successful season in the north. Over the past few months we completed bird surveys for the Canadian Wildlife Service and supported a film project focusing on Orca predation of Narwhal. Check out arctictern.org for the full season’s blog and info about […]

Arctic Tern and crew set off from Quebec City today for another season in Greenland and Baffin Island. Follow their trip here, as they make their way north to survey seabird populations and film Orca.

Polar Night, by Vincent Hilaire and Tara Expeditions, is showing at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, NZ, from July to October. The exhibition shows stunning black and white images taken during the Arctic winter, as Tara and her crew drifted with the sea ice past the North Pole.

After a very hot and dry southern summer ashore in New Zealand, we’re looking forward to heading north again this year aboard Arctic Tern I, the Students on Ice expedition yacht. We’ll be closely following last years route, traversing Davis Strait from Quebec to Greenland, and then sailing back across Baffin Bay to Bylot Island, Baffin Island and the Labrador coast. En route we’ll meet local communities, undertake sea bird surveys and attempt to film Orca feeding right up north.

For those of you who haven’t met him yet, Mr Bingles is an occasional member of the Ice Navigators team! Mr Bingles’ latest film will soon be screening at the Reel Earth film festival. http://www.reelearth.org.nz After reading about melting ice in the North, Mr Bingles decided to sail all the way up there to see […]

The end of the summer 2012 saw a new record minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic. This observation certainly agrees with what we saw in the northern reaches of Baffin Bay, where we were surprised to find a complete absence of ice as we sailed from northern Greenland to Ellesmere Island.

We have just returned from a busy northern summer aboard Arctic Tern with WWF. After a storm-ridden passage south from Baffin Island, dodging autumn gales all the way, we’re putting the boat to bed for the winter in Gananoque, Ontario, and looking forward to some R&R on the hard